Mike Stopforth has reported on Google's top news searches. The list reads as follows:

The top searches on Google News:

1. paris hilton
2. orlando bloom
3. cancer
4. podcasting
5. hurricane katrina
6. bankruptcy
7. martina hingis
8. autism
9. 2006 nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006

What the fuck is this shit? Paris, Orlando, Martina, 2006 nfl shit, celebrity Big Brother. Need I go on? I am impressed with the cancer, autism and maybe even the podcast and bankruptcy searches but so many celeb and sports searches baffles me. Is it actually possible that there are hardly any news searches on the Google news site. What about congress, politics, history, public figures in Government, International law, journalism, Television programs and channels such as CNN, news sites and all the other topics that might possibly have featured in actual newspapers or news sites around the globe?

On the other hand one needs to ask if these searches are representative of the proportion of news coverage that each topic/search receives in the media's portfolios. Maybe Paris Hilton has received more coverage than Iraq this year and maybe Orlando has been on television more often than Tony Blair, Thabo Mbeki and Kofi Annan (if you don't know any of those names then maybe you are one of the Paris Hilton search culprits) put together. Then again, maybe Americans are searching Google for these things more than any other group in the world and that is why Ms Hilton is at the top of the list. I don't know, you tell me.

Labels: Google News, Mike Stopforth